The title, by the way, comes right off the license plates: that's the motto of BC and it is entirely appropriate. They chose that over "obsessed with health foods" and "socialized medicine no matter how long the waiting list is!" Oh, sorry, that was my acerbic side sneaking out again. No more, I promise!
Today I knocked a couple of items off my bucket list: I visited a Wendy's for the first time in twenty-some years, and did some sightseeing in a nearby park. Wendy's, for those of you joining us from far-flung lands, is the finest fast-food hamburger joint in Canada. It doesn't quite come up to the standard of Five Guys in the US, but still pretty good. The hamburger patties are square and not frozen and they actually taste like freshly cooked hamburger patties. Excellent crispy fries as well. Alas, no Wendy's in Mexico that I know of...
Then I took a trip to the nearest park, Capilano River Regional Park, where the Cleveland Dam is located and a very large reservoir serving the drinking water needs of Vancouver. Here is a panorama:
You always know where north is in Vancouver, because that's where the mountains are. On the north side of the city of Vancouver is Stanley Park, one thousand acres of pretty much untouched forest except around the edges. In most places those trees would be considered large, but here, this is what grows anywhere humans haven't cleared the land:
That's what, twenty, twenty-five meters? Just an ordinary tree you see everywhere. The LARGE trees are found in the old forests and I have seen ones where the trunk is five meters in diameter and the tree is one hundred meters tall!
UPDATE: One of those big trees:
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I've passed a Wendy's a few times in London, though never been in. Didn't know it was Canadian. There's one by the tube station of a more colourful part of London, Camden, which has a large famous market where once upon a time I used to go with my father to buy bootleg recordings... it also has a couple of good secondhand bookshops still.
ReplyDeleteWe have a famous oak tree locally (which legend has it was planted by Elizabeth I...) that is supposed to be the largest of its kind and I think has about a 2.5m diameter -- so 5m, wow!
I think the largest I have seen was a part of the trunk of a big Douglas fir at the logging camp in Tahsis on Vancouver Island. I can't find a picture of it, but it was something like the photo I just added to the post.
ReplyDeleteI think Wendy's is actually an American chain, but lots of ones in Canada.
That is indeed a very big tree.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we're going there ("socialized medicine no matter how long the waiting list is!" ) in the USA it is "Maximum cost and profit for health care and insurance no matter how bad the overall outcomes are relative to other industrialized countries"). Not sure what it is like in Mexico, but the health care and insurance in the US is a nightmare, and I have good coverage. There has to be a better way.
ReplyDeleteI once had a multi-year email discussion with two highly educated gentlemen, both with doctorates in philosophy and one with many years of experience as a hospital administrator in Canada, and one conclusion that we came to is that the economics of health care are extremely complicated for a lot of reasons, some of them social and ethical. So I don't have much of an answer except to say that Mexico has two side-by-side systems, one a basic "seguro social" one subsidized by the government that offers basic healthcare for a very low cost per family. The other is a free market private system that delivers speedy results at a very reasonable price. I have been very happy with the private system. I'm not sure why this works here or why it might not work elsewhere, but I am very happy not to have to wait many weeks for an MRI or months to see a specialist.
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